When the raid went down, the pols headed for the Old Canteen

New House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello ordered the chicken marsala; John Carnevale, the lasagna. But their phones kept ringing and Carnevale said, “We actually had a hard time eating.”

Katherine Gregg Journal Political Writer kathyprojo

This story was updated at 11:10 p.m.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. –- New House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello whipped out his cellphone in the basement entrance hall to the State House on Thursday to show a reporter the name he had penciled in for a lunch date at the Old Canteen restaurant when Rhode Island’s political world turned upside down last Friday.

On his calendar for that hour was one name: Rep. John Carnevale, D-Providence.

But as they sat down for their pre-scheduled lunch, Mattiello said their cellphones rang incessantly with news of what was happening at the State House, where the state police, the FBI and the IRS had swooped into then-House Speaker Gordon D. Fox’s office with a search warrant.

As Mattiello tells the story: one of the first calls he got came from Rep. Cale Keable, D-Burrillville, who simply asked — “where are you?” Within minutes, Keable was at the Old Canteen which, as the chaotic day unfolded, became then-House Majority Leader Mattiello’s political war room.

At that point, Carnevale, was still aligned with a rival faction of “12 to 15 lawmakers” led by Rep. John DeSimone, D-Providence, who had waged and lost an earlier battle to become House speaker.

Carnevale said Thursday that he went to the lunch hoping to win then-Majority Leader Mattiello’s support for several of his bills, including one to reinstate a repealed tax credit that benefits manufacturers.

Mattiello ordered the chicken marsala; Carnevale, the lasagna. But with their phones “both ringing off the hook,” Carnevale said, “We actually had a hard time eating.”

At one point, Mattiello said he had to go outside for a minute to take a call.

Carnevale said, “After five … ten minutes, I was just getting up. I was wondering if something happened to him and he comes walking in. He was staring at me. ‘Did you see what happened to me?’ I said no. He said, ‘The minute I walked out, the media was waiting for me. Someone … stuck a camera in my face.’”

“It was bizarre. … A scheduled meeting to talk about legislation,” said Carnevale who, a day later, pledged his vote to Mattiello along with the majority of DeSimone’s backers. The turning point, he said, was Mattiello’s commitment to make DeSimone his number-two on the Hill.

Carnevale said his own switch of allegiance wasn’t hard. “They are very close in their economic beliefs … their social beliefs. I believe those two mirror each other.”

Carnevale, a retired Providence police officer who now works part time for Quaker Lane Outfitters, has since emerged as a co-vice chairman of the powerful House committee that controls the state’s $8-billion budget, and the chairman of the public-safety subcommittee.

As for Keable, he says he knew little when he first called Mattiello beyond news reports that Fox’s office had been raided, but “things developed very, very quickly.”

“Shortly after I spoke to him and arrived at the Old Canteen it was very obvious that rival factions were forming in anticipation of a speaker’s race. I made the determination that the race was inevitable and was already very much in progress and that I would be with Nick,” he said Thursday.

Back to last Friday: Mattiello said he went directly from the Old Canteen hours later to the Providence Marriott, for the caucus he called for that night.

Contrary to rumors that quickly swept through Rhode Island political circles, Mattiello said he was not at any time joined that day by prominent lobbyists William J. Murphy, a Democratic former House speaker, and Robert Goldberg, a Republican former Senate minority leader.

The rest, as they say, is now history:

Mattiello forged a political marriage-of-convenience with DeSimone who, as the new majority leader, is now his second-in-command. Harvard-schooled lawyer Keable, who raced in to help Mattiello without waiting to be asked, is now House Judiciary Committee chairman.

But this being a Rhode Island story, Mattiello also talked about how he ended up as an usher at Murphy’s 1994 wedding.

The story begins with Mattiello’s Uncle Ralph, who owned the gas station across the street from the old Bevilacqua law office, at 380 Broadway, when a young Nick, the first in his family to graduate from college, was finishing law school.

As Mattiello told the story, Uncle Ralph asked “Joe Jr.” — lawyer Joseph Bevilacqua Jr. — if he could help his nephew out. Bevilacqua helped young Mattiello land an unpaid internship and then, after Mattiello graduated, he rented office space within the Bevilacqua law firm.

(Joseph A. Bevilacqua Jr. was sentenced in October 2008 to 21 months in prison — and disbarred — for shaking down two drug-dealer clients from Fall River with another well-known Rhode Island lawyer, John M. Cicilline, the older brother of U.S. Rep. David N. Cicilline.)

Mattiello stresses that he was a renter who never worked for the Bevilacqua family.

Not long after, he was sharing office space with another young lawyer, William “Billy” Murphy, who struck him almost immediately as a “rising star” in the legal field.

The April 3, 1994, wedding announcement read: “Married March 26 in Sacred Heart Church, West Warwick, were Stacey Lynn Judge and William John Murphy … Ushers were Brian Judge, brother of the bride, N. David Collins, Nicholas Mattiello, Pasquale Corso, John Tramonti Jr., James Manning, Joseph Bevilacqua and David Castaldi.”

On Thursday, Mattiello said he still thinks of Murphy as a brother, but they do not socialize often, and they spoke only once during the succession fight that played out this past week.

He said Murphy called to congratulate him.

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